ENTREVESTOR: Halifax startup gives clients unique profile

Traci Johnstone’s story is a study of tenacity and style, and she has poured those two facets into the startup she’s launching this year, eOLIO.

The startup — the name is a shortening of e-portfolio — is an online tool that helps people present a portfolio of their work online, and helps companies view such portfolios when they are recruiting prospective employees. The Halifax company has been going through limited launches for its two products this summer, and is planning a full commercial launch in the autumn.

“The beautiful thing about eOLIO is we’ve streamlined the process of presenting your brand,” said Johnstone, the CEO of the Halifax-based company. “LinkedIn is about what you’ve done and eOLIO is about who you are.”

Personal branding is important to Johnstone. In fact, the company’s promotional literature says that “without personal branding, your career is dead.” Her mission with eOLIO is to help people assemble their work and personal assets and present them in the best way possible to create, maintain and promote a personal brand.

Her emphasis on personal branding comes from her own experience. She was, to use her own words, a “big girl,” weighing, at one point, 268 pounds. But she lost her excess weight and has kept it off for more than a decade. After she posted some indiscreet beach photos online in 2009, she came to understand we all have personal brands and it’s important to create the best brand possible.

Excited by the startup world, she set out to launch a company that would help people establish a favourable brand for themselves. She founded eOLIO in early 2012 and worked to find the right niches to make money from her vision.

She has worked with 13 partners, including the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency, the Department of Economic and Regional Development and Tourism and Dalhousie University. The result is a software-as-a-service product that is visually compelling, with a striking black, white and red motif.

After reworking the business model, Johnstone is targeting two markets: “creators,” or people who want to create an online portfolio of their work (photos, writings, videos), and “locators,” or business recruiting people who need to see people’s portfolios, and organize and score them.

The company held a private launch for creators in July by contacting 10,000 people and alerting them about the new product. “The response has been phenomenal,” said Johnstone. “It’s the summertime and still we’ve seen this incredible response coming in. … It’s all been positive. We haven’t really had any negative response at all.”

The soft launch for the locators product is coming in August, and then the company, which now has two full-time employees and one part-time employee, hopes for a full commercial launch in the autumn. The basic products are free, and eOLIO charges for premium products.

The company has received some investment, so it now has eight shareholders and it is now raising capital, with a target of $300,000.